I wonder what will happen to the game engine. From what I have read here, most people can’t care less if it is died. If there are some who want to see it, who of you can update driver support and code all that?
Anyone?
I hope it lives through and gets updated, but I think this is only possible if Ton works on it in his spare time 
It would be fantastic if the game engine could be made to work at a fair speed on a general PC with Microsoft, and if the physics bit worked a bit (lot) better, what a dream that would be! Creating games wold be a breeze. People would sit up and take notice then.
Rob
Well, I certainly would not start crying bloody tears if the Game engine vanished (I am more into modelling etc. than Game designing…) but, hey, it’s a feature so we should not just kick it away…
THE GAME ENGINE SHALL NOT DIE!
Never Ever Ever . Thats why I bothered with Blender to begin with.
GAMES !!!
YaY !!!
^v^
I’ll definately continue to work with the game engine, even if the development community cans it. I don’t really have the programming knowledge or finesse to continue its development however, and I fear most who like the game engine probably are not coders (that’s WHY they like the game engine), so we’ll see if it gets any development. I think that with some cleaning up, it could be a very powerful tool.
I think the game engine brings a good, expandable adition to blender. It is easy enough to use without programming, but with some (incredibly simple) scripts it can be taken much further
personally I think it has some shortcomings that if I get annoyed enough I would write scripts for. But overall it rules.
as far as it running slowly on some computers: those computers aren’t that great anyway. :
integrated videocards are bad.
Roller2:
geforce 2 on k6-2 450 (192 - 8 ram): 45fps
integrated intel on celery 900 (256 ram): 11fps
hmm
maybe there is a reason I don’t like intel
oh yeah, I want to help expand the game engine.
hmm…wasn’t the focus on game engine somewhat the thing NaN didn’t get there that they wanted…? (bankrupcy)
I find this ironic.
First (pre 2.x), people were raving about the excellent game engine, how it will revolutionize things and be all powerful and neat and whatnot. IMHO, even 1.68 game engine I got to try was better than any of the two 2.x engines. Faster if nothing else.
Second, when the game engine was release (2.x), everyone was happy for like, two days. Then came the fact that you couldn’t do quake 3 with it in three days, and people started disliking it. A while later, everyone started complaining about lack of updates on the non-realtime side. I even expressed my worries before 2.x, I was then assured by Ton that no worries, the realtime physics and such would be integrated with the animation side to create an NLA editor. And we all know that never happened (for reasons of its own naturally).
Third, now people are ravaging about the fact that if Blender were to become open source (remember, it isn’t even decided yet), the game engine would disappear or stop being worked on because of lack of interest from the developers (or, would-be developers). How about using a third party engine? There are several out there, and most do the job way better than Blender (IMHO).
Am I the only one finding this whole story a tad funny and ironic?
There are quite a few 3rd party engines out there, this is true. Most of them, technology-wise, are LEAGUES ahead of blender’s game engine. But do they have the easy-to-use interface of Blender? Not even close. They try, but none of these tools match the ease and flexibility Blender offers. I just enjoy making games in blender, it’s fun to me; wheras using these other tools just isn’t as fun. And there is a lot that still can be done in blender’s game engine, in no way have we maxed out it’s capabilities.
The best way to make a game is still to learn programming, and liscense a good 3d engine (or make one yourself). But for all of those who either don’t have the mental affinity towards programming, or don’t have the time to invest in learning it, or just want to dink around and make a game, Blender is a lifesaver. It can be a good learning tool, and is robust enough to hold up to larger projects. I hope that it gets some attention, but I agree that the non-realtime side of blender needs to be focused on.
Heck, I probably wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the game engine, and the past two years I’ve spent working with it and being in the community I wouldn’t trade for the world.
There are quite a few 3rd party engines out there, this is true. Most of them, technology-wise, are LEAGUES ahead of blender’s game engine. But do they have the easy-to-use interface of Blender? Not even close.
Well put. Blender’s engine might not be that revolutionary but it’s integration with UI definitely is. Even now there is no single tool that would allow content artists to create a game. With regular engines, you will need to program and compile a game before you can test it. Plus the fact that it is cross-platform is a real plus.
The engine is not (yet) suited for high-end games. It’s my opinion that a generic engine will never beat an engine dedicated to a game genre. But for prototyping and small productions it is a real valuable tool. The value is in the logic bricks. Imagine what would happen if a few talented developers would get there hands on the source code.
Maarten
There IS a GPL cross-platform game development kit (note: not just an engine, a COMPLETE game development system with scripting, physics, dynamic streaming of worlds from CDROM, sophisticated director-based camera control, and much more) which in many ways is better than the Blender game engine. It is designed to allow content-artists to create games with no programming.
It’s the World Foundry engine, previously a commercial project for a commercial game, now GPL. Check it out at http://www.worldfoundry.org. There are only about three people, including me, who are in any way active with the project, so it desperately needs attention. This is a powerful system, folks - it’s just that there are no cool levels to show off the engine (because all of those cool levels were created as part of a commercial game project and cannot be released under GPL). So if you are an artist and are willing to work with a somewhat rough system to help make a really GREAT game development system, then check it out! Join the sourceforge mailing list too.
ObPlug: You can also read a section about World Foundry in my book “Advanced Linux 3D Graphics Programming” by Wordware Publishing.
The game engine is the exact reason NaN died in the third place. They were leaning too much on their weak engine, and fell right over. (Hmm… it seems like that analogy works perfectly.) I’m sure that now they’re smarter, and trying to put their focus more on the E-shop. Supposing they get us into donating enough money.
Actually, I’m a little glad they were focusing too much on the game engine and not the animation and stills part. Thus, the Publisher didn’t mean anything if you wanted to make a movie in Blender and sell it to Miramax/Artisan/an independent film studio, because the Publisher applied to only games! (Unless I made a mistake in reading Ton’s response to that.)
I know, I sound evil.
I would of even paid 1,000$ for the game engine if it were mostly bug free with excellent internet protocols. Even if it was a tad slow.
Well, once the development of Creator gets back on track
and becomes well established, (he said, reveling his idealistic determination) I’m sure that there will be someone willing to continue
the development of the game engine, perhaps as an optional componant
to Creator.
Of coarse who knows what will make it in to the official version.
But you know what? After all the ups and downs, the waiting and hoping,
I’ll take it with or with out the game engine!
Roller2:
geforce 2 on k6-2 450 (192 - 8 ram): 45fps
integrated intel on celery 900 (256 ram): 11fps
Fool. You blame the CPU for the drop here. The real reason is the GPU. The GeForce2 will outshine integrated graphics any day.
Granted, the Celeron is not the greates CPU…but don’t blame it for the crappy graphics system that it is attached to.
If you want a real test, put the GeForce2 into the Celeron system and run the test again and compair.
The game engine should not be removed. It is such a unique feature. However, I think that the focus of development (at least at the start) should be on modeling and rendering.
the World Foundry engine, previously a commercial project for a commercial game, now GPL. Check it out at http://www.worldfoundry.org. There are only about three people, including me, who are in any way active with the project, so it desperately needs attention.
Well, -nlin-, I’d love to check it out but I can’t find any downloads. Can you clue me in? Source? Zips? Nothing is clearly stated as to where the downloads are. I’ve given up, unless I hear from you???
ER, this is an edit:
What is CVS? I guess I’ll have to answer that question to get the code. It would help Dummies like me if you would explain how to get it, then they wouldn’t be scared away. I think I’ve given up on some projects (looking into them that is) just because I couldn’t find a download… I’m just getting the idea here for the first time. I’ll try again here…
Ingie
WEll, even if it’s a nice program for downloads, or organizing your files, I can’t use it at work without administrator help (fat chance I’ll ask) Will try it at home 
ingiebee -->
CVS = concurrent versioning system
it’s a system designed so that the lastest development version is always available, and developers can easily add their changes to the current version. it probably does much more than that, but i’ve never used one, not being a coder you see.
if (when 
) blender becomes open source there will most likely be a CVS for the developers. binary versions will be there as well, but they’ll almost always be significantly behind the dev version on the CVS.
BEAT
What’s all this about death to the game engine??? That seems like a rather foolish thing to do! :o
If anything, it’s the game engine that’s really going to get all the benefits of all the opensource stuff that’s on the way! Just think about all the supercool stuff that you guys will be able to implement once you have access to Blender’s internal workings: Cg realtime shaders, Unreal/Quake/Half Life model and map import/export, new modelling tools, multi-pass rendering, better texture support, realtime particles (now there’s a thought!!!), support for more languages…Not to mention all the new modelling and animation tools that you’ll be able to have at your disposal as the animation/modelling side of Blender matures.
The game engine is far from dead - it’s just starting to come alive, for crying out loud!! This is one of the first gaming platforms I’ve found where you can develop games (using the same files!) on just about ANY operating system worth having.
If you guys leave the game engine alone, then yes, it probably will die. But if you all take the opportunity to build in just some of these features I’ve mentioned (or the many more besides that I’ve missed!) then you guys will have a platform which NO ONE will ever dare question.
Just think about it.
LethalSideParting